A former California family who thought about surviving, not just "prepping", has taken the plunge. Follow them on their new adventures in Colorado through their trials and tribulations

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Stop eating the hose!

I am back on line. Obvious since you are reading this. I am still frustrated with the new phone but it's getting a little better each day. I can plug the phone into my desktop computer and it will get on-line that way. I was talking to a friend and he sent me some links to put into the new phone which would turn it into a hotspot, which I was told will use less of my Internet allowance. So I tried doing that and hooking it to the desktop. It didn't work. How was I to know the desktop didn't have the right parts in it? Then I tried it on girl's computer. Still didn't work. It didn't dawn on my that when I had the Internet card it always had to be plugged into those computers. There wasn't anything just streaming over the air. But the work computer, now that's a different story. I can use the WiFi part of the phone with the work laptop. So rather than have the phone plugged into the computer in my library I'm sitting on my bed with the computer on my lap.

Now I know most of you are snickering that this is simple stuff. It's simple if you know and understand it. It's foreign to someone who doesn't. Just like last week when I got the new phone. I didn't know how to use it at all. Girl set the alarm for the phone to go off at the end of the workday and I had to ask one of the young employees how to shut the alarm off. Then I downloaded the 204 pages of instructions for the phone and printed it up. Great bedtime reading. Prior to that, I was talking to a friend on the phone and he said, "just tap the phone and ask it how to do that. It will tell you." "What? My phone will talk to me?" If you have no experience with the technology then you don't know what you don't know! So now I know...sort of.

I pulled the irrigation hose out front because the rabbits had eaten through it. The neighbor said he hasn't had a problem because he keeps his hose out in the open rather than tucking it under the plants. He said that with the cars traveling down the road the rabbits won't go into the open to eat the hoses. Sounds good to me. That may work at his house but not mine. I didn't replace the irrigation hose. Instead I bought another 100 feet of garden hose. I decided to just hand water the raspberries. I watered them. Pulled most of the hose back up the driveway and felt good that the plants got watered. I went back outside a couple days later and watered again. This works. Sure it's not as convenient as the irrigation hose and just turning a knob but the weather is great, it gives me a little peace and quiet to go out and water, and I'm making sure that the plants are watered. After all, we haven't had any rain in a long time. A couple days ago I went back out to water again and no water came out of the nozzle. Those kids. I'm sure they undid one of the couplings. After all I have about 600 feet of hose all connected together. So I walked the hose line to see where it was undone. It wasn't. There were huge holes in the garden hose. In three different places!

I can't shoot the rabbits because I'd either be shooting at the road or at the house. Neither is an option. I can't poison them because there are quail in the same area and I wouldn't want the birds to eat the poison. No, I just have to outsmart them. I repaired the hose but I can't keep doing that. I give up. Can't give up. That's not an option.

Today I bought irrigation pipe. I am not going to bury it, instead it is going to get strapped on to the fencing about 3 feet off the ground. I bought risers and 1/2 circle sprinkler heads. No more drip irrigation for the front. It's heavy duty now. These raspberries are cosing me a fortune! I could buy raspberries forever and probably not spend as much money as this irrigation mess has cost. I just have to remember that it's not just the raspberries. It's a barrier between the house and the road. I have the fencing and then three feet wide and four feet high of brush pile and then the raspberries in front of the brush. Maybe next summer we will actually get some raspberries to pick. Then I'll forget all about the rabbits destroying my irrigation.

The thought has crossed my mind about how I would get this stuff watered if TSHTF. I have a lot of plants and trees that need water. The mulberries are almost old enough to grow without being watered. The olives don't need water, nor do the figs. Everything else around here has to be irrigated. If I had to carry everything out by bucket I would spend hours each day watering. In order to run water through the hoses you need to have good pressure. We have a pressure tank so I wonder if we hand pumped the water into a large holding tank and then this water went into the pressure tank so run the irrigation? If TSHTF I may want things along the road to look dead anyway. It wouldn't be a good idea to have everything around me lush and green when everyone else around has everything dead.

Girl was in a Veteran's Day parade over the weekend. We had dinner tonight with Army daughter and Navy son-in-law. I called military brother and wished him well. There's a big parade in the city tomorrow that we may attend. Other than that, tomorrow the irrigation is being put in. The rabbits are going to have to learn how to jump if they want to eat any more of my hose.

About Me

With over 19 years working on our preps and after having a created a fully prepared 5 acres in the Great Central Valley of California, we up and moved to a very small town in Colorado. We are now on 35 acres with no fruit trees, no garden, a home that isn't finished, and no job. Sounds like paradise, or at least it will be. Lots of work to do. How much time do I have before there's no time left?
We still have food storage and lots of provisions, but are not in any way self sufficient...yet. Follow us on our new adventure. Perhaps you'll learn something from us and from your comments we can learn something from you.